During World War I Southern blacks moved in great numbers to Northern cities, in part because of the wartime demand for labor. Between 1916 and 1919 Chicago’s black population doubled, and the ghetto district pushed toward white territory. Whites, many of them also recent Southern migrants, resented this “intrusion” on their living space and their jobs. While the war boom lasted, the races lived in uneasy peace, clashing only occasionally at the boundary line between their districts. But the end of the war brought a decline in jobs, a rash of strikes, and the frequent use of blacks as strike-breakers. It also brought a new Negro militancy, particularly among returning veterans who had been treated as equals in European cities. The day before the riot, the last of the returning black troops paraded down Michigan Avenue. Tension in Chicago rose during the summer of 1919, during which many blacks were molested, attacked, or killed. Twenty-four black houses were bombed in June and July. At best the Chicago police were of no help to the blacks, and they soon lost confidence in the protection of the law.
On July 27th a Negro youth swimming in Lake Michigan floated past the imaginary boundary line which separated a “white” from a “black” beach. He was stoned, and drowned, but the police refused to arrest his white assailants—indeed, they arrested a Negro on a white complaint. A bloody riot was then touched off which ended seven days later; 23 blacks and 15 whites died, over 500 were injured, and about 1,000 left homeless. Major race riots also occurred that year in Charleston, South Carolina, Long View, Texas, Washington, D.C., Knoxville, Tennessee, and Omaha, Nebraska.
The following account appeared in the Chicago Defender, a Negro paper, on August 2, 1919. On the Chicago Riot, see Chicago Commission on Race Relations: The Negro in Chicago (1922); Arthur Waskow: From Race Riot to Sit-In (1966); and William M. Tuttle, “Labor Conflict and Racial Violence: The Black Worker in Chicago, 1894–1919,” Labor History, X (Fall 1969).
For fully four days this old city has been rocked in a quake of racial antagonism, seared in a blaze of red hate flaming as fiercely as the heat of day—each hour ushering in new stories of slaying, looting, arson, rapine, sending the awful roll of casualties to a grand total of 40 dead and more than 500 wounded, many of them perhaps fatally. A certain madness distinctly indicated in reports of shootings, stabbings, and burning of buildings which literally pour in every minute. Women and children have not been spared. Traffic has been stopped. Phone wires have been cut. Victims lay in every street and vacant lots. Hospitals are filled: 4,000 troops rest in arms, among which are companies of the old Eighth Regiment, while the inadequate force of police battle vainly to save the city’s honor.
Undertakers on the South Side refused to accept bodies of white victims. White undertakers refused to accept black victims. Both for the same reason. They feared the vengeance of the mobs without.
Every little while bodies were found in some street, alley, or vacant lot—and no one sought to care for them. Patrols were unable to accommodate them because they were being used in rushing live victims to hospitals. Some victims were dragged to a mob’s “No Man’s Land” and dropped.
The telephone wires in the raging districts were cut in many places by the rioters and it became difficult to estimate the number of dead victims.
Hospitals Filled with Maimed
Provident Hospital, 36th and Dearborn Streets, situated in the heart of the “black belt,” as well as other hospitals in the surrounding districts, are filled with the maimed and dying. Every hour, every minute, every second, finds patrols backed up and unloading their human freight branded with the red symbol of this orgy of hate. Many victims have reached the hospitals, only to die before kind hands could attend to them. So pressing has the situation become that schools, drug stores and private houses are being used. Trucks, drays and hearses are being used for ambulances.
Monday Sees Reign of Terror
Following the Sunday affray, the red tongues had blabbed their fill, and Monday morning found the thoroughfares in the white neighborhoods throated with a sea of humananity—everywhere—some armed with guns, bricks, clubs and an oath. The presence of a black face in their vicinity was the signal for a carnival of death, and before any aid could reach the poor, unfortunate one his body reposed in some kindly gutter, his brains spilled over a dirty pavement. Some of the victims were chased, caught and dragged into alleys and lots, where they were left for dead. In all parts of the city, white mobs dragged from surface cars, black passengers, wholly ignorant of any trouble, and set upon them. An unidentified young woman and a 3 month old baby were found dead on the street at the intersection of 47th Street and Wentworth avenue. She had attempted to board a car there when the mob seized her, beat her, slashed her body into ribbons and beat the baby’s brains out against against a telegraph pole. Not satisfied with this, one rioter severed her breasts, and a white youngster bore them aloft on a pole, triumphantly, while a crowd hooted gleefully. All the time this was happening, several policemen were in the crowd, but did not make any attempt to make rescue until too late.
Rioters operating in the vicinity of the stockyards, which lies in the heart of white residences west of Halsted Street, attacked scores of workers—women and men alike returning from work. Stories of these outrages began to flutter into the black vicinities and hysterical men harrangued their fellows to avenge the killings—and soon they, infected with the insanity of the mob, rushed through the streets, drove high powered motor cars or waited for street cars, which they attacked with gunfire and stones. Shortly after noon the traffic south of 22d Street and north of 65th Street, west of Cottage Grove Avenue and east of Went-worth Avenue, was stopped with the exception of trolley cars. Whites who entered this zone were set upon with unmeasurable fury.
Policemen employed in the disturbed sections were wholly unable to handle the situation. When one did attempt to carry out his duty he was beaten and his gun taken from him. The fury of the mob could not be abated. Mounted police were employed, but to no avail.
35th Vortex of Night’s Rioting
With the approach of darkness the rioting gave prospects of being continued throughout the night. Whites boarded the platforms and shot through the windows of the trains at passengers. Some of the passengers alighting from cars were thrown from the elevated structure, suffering broken legs, fractured skulls, and death.
The block between State Street and Wabash Avenue on East 35th Street was the scene of probably the most shooting and rioting of the evening and a pitched battle ensued between the police, whites and blacks.
The trouble climaxed when white occupants of the Angelus apartments began firing shots and throwing missiles from their windows. One man was shot through the head, but before his name could be secured he was spirited away. The attack developed a hysterical battling fervor and the mob charged the building and the battle was on.
Police were shot. Whites were seen to tumble out of automobiles, from doorways and other places, wounded or suffering from bruises inflicted by gunshot, stones or bricks. A reign of terror literally ensued. Automobiles were stopped, occupants beaten and machines wrecked. Streetcars operating in 35th Street were wrecked at will and north and south bound State Street cars’ windows were shattered and white occupants beaten.
Trolley cars operating east and west on 35th Street were stopped, since they always left the vicinity in a perforated state. Shortly after 3 o’clock all service was dincontinued on 43rd, 47th and 51st streets.
Stores Looted; Homes Burned
Tiring of street fights, rioters turned to burning and looting. This was truly a sleepless night, and a resume of the day’s happenings nourished an inclination for renewed hostilities from another angle. The homes of blacks isolated in white neighborhoods were burned to the ground and the owners and occupants beaten and thrown unconscious in the smouldering embers. Meanwhile rioters in the “black belt” smashed windows and looted shops of white merchants on State Street.
Other rioters, manning high powered cars and armed, flitted up and down the darkened streets, chancing shots at fleeting whites on the street and those riding in street cars.
Toward midnight quiet reigned along State Street under the vigilance of 400 policemen and scores of uniformed men of the 8th Regiment.
Tuesday dawned sorrowing with a death toll of 20 dead and 300 injured. In the early morning a thirteen-year-old lad standing on his porch at 51st and Wabash Avenue was shot to death by a white man who, in an attempt to get away, encountered a mob and his existence became history. A mounted policeman, unknown, fatally wounded a small boy in the 49th block of Dearborn Street and was shot to death by some unknown rioter.
Workers thronging the loop district to their work were set upon by mobs of sailors and marines roving the streets and several fatal casualties have been reported. Infuriated white rioters attempted to storm the Palmer house and the post office where there are large numbers of employees, but an adequate police force dispersed them and later the men were spirited away to their homes in closed government mail trucks and other conveyances. White clerks have replaced our clerks in the main post office temporarily and our men have been shifted to outlying post offices. The loop violence came as a surprise to the police. Police and reserves had been scattered over the South Side rioting district, as no outbreaks had been expected in this quarter. Toward noon stations therein were overwhelmed with calls.